The last email closed with the hollow click of an overused key. Kael held his hands above the keyboard as if the plastic were hot. The cursor blinked, patient and bright, borrowing the rhythm of a heartbeat that wasn't his.
Another long, ordinary day. Tickets. Reports. Tiny decisions that pretended to keep a world upright - tightening bolts twice a day to stop a ship you never see from taking on water. The illusion of control had a sturdy taste. He swished it in his mouth and spit it out by pushing his chair back and sliding it neatly beneath the desk.
He switched off the desk lamp and crossed the short hallway toward the living room. A cold glow leaked around the edge of the curtain. The television was on. He didn't remember turning it on.
On the screen, a presenter wore a calm face like a strained muscle. The lower - third banners overscrolled, one devouring the other: Stay Home - Do Not Approach - Avoid Contact - Emergency - Unconfirmed - Suspected - All Hospitals - The clip cut mid - sentence to footage from a shaking phone: a street at night, people running without a single direction, then a figure stumbling into the frame as if pulled by a string.
Kael raised the volume a notch. Sirens braided with voices, too many voices, piled against the tiny speakers. A field reporter talked in gasps, a microphone clenched in his fist. " - not yet clear - medical advisories - isolated - stay where you are - " Behind him, a compact car slammed into a metal barrier and the engine screamed at redline, void of a driver to kill it.
He lowered the sound. Quiet did not return. He could hear the building listening - water whining in the pipes, the distant hum of an elevator deciding which floor to trust, a neighbor's chair dragging half a centimeter. The apartment felt suddenly too open for a single person to defend, full of angles he hadn't negotiated with in years.
He walked to the window, held the curtain to the side with two fingers. Night had an orange skin. Far away, a warehouse district burned; smoke went up in patient ropes. Closer, the avenue winked with little ruptures of light - not rain, not traffic - something more broken. A bloom of white flashed, and the air clapped back hard enough that he felt it in his teeth.
He shut the curtain. The old metal rings scraped along the rod, sounding like coins. He stood there with his palm flattened on the fabric, as if he could feel the heat through it. He couldn't. The heat was elsewhere. Panic didn't arrive as advertised; it leaked in through the seams and reassembled itself behind the ribs.
"Inventory," Kael said to nobody. The word steadied the shelves in his head.
In the kitchen, he opened every cupboard and pulled everything out. He sorted by instinct and then by use. Pasta: four opened, two unopened. Rice: half a bag and one pouch that he resented for existing. Cans: tomatoes, chickpeas, three tuna, a corn, sardines with a label curling at the edges. UHT milk, almond milk, instant coffee that belonged to his worst mornings. Five liters of bottled water, maybe more in the pipes. A flashlight that seemed tired just from being asked to work.
His phone screamed a government alert. He flinched, cursed, and caught it before it fell into a pot. ALL CAPS rode the screen like cavalry. STAY INDOORS. DO NOT APPROACH INDIVIDUALS EXHIBITING ABNORMAL BEHAVIOR. ABNORMAL looked legal and empty at once, a word that meant please don't ask me to define it.
He put the phone on airplane mode and set it face down. Battery would matter more than truth for a while. He took a notebook from the drawer and drew five blunt columns: FOOD, WATER, LIGHT, TOOLS, MEDICINE. He found disinfectant, bandages, painkillers, gloves. Enough to pretend competence. Enough to be dangerous if he believed the pretense too hard.
Back in the living room, he reinforced the door because movies had taught him the shape of fear even when they lied about everything else. He wedged an old shelf board across the door and cinched it with a belt to the leg of the table. It wouldn't stop anyone determined, but it might catch a shoulder and buy him two breaths. He hooked a bicycle bell to the handle with a shoelace, adjusted it until the slightest movement would set it trembling.
Windows next. Cardboard panels from the closet, tape, the wastebasket flipped to hold the curtain close. Not a bunker; just modesty with light. He walked the apartment and turned off anything that blinked. Router. Power strip. He taped a scrap of paper over the tiny green LEDs because tiny things have a talent for betraying you at scale.
Something outside banged - a dumpster hit without grace - and kept banging until someone else decided that sound was a problem. Sirens rose and fell with no grammar. Kael drank a glass of water without tasting it and set it down very quietly, as if the glass had a right to stay unafraid.
Then it happened. It didn't come from outside. It entered without sound from someplace that didn't have a name, like remembering a word before you've heard it spoken.
A pale rectangle formed in the room where thinking happens. No glow touched the walls. No projector warmed the air. The rectangle simply existed inside his attention, clean as a blade, and words appeared upon it as if they'd always been there:
[System: Minimal Initialization] - Situation detected: partial collapse of public services. - User status: alive, conscious, mobile. - Resource estimate: apartment; food for 10 - 14 days (rationed); low energy; unstable network. - Proposal: Domestic Confinement Protocol (Level I).
Kael didn't scream or ask the ceiling for mercy. He stared. The letters held their place. He looked away. They remained. He closed his eyes. They were still there, and opening his eyes didn't push them away or make them cling closer. The words occurred like math.
Another line wrote itself, steel on wet chalk:
[Mission #0001 - Assessment]
Objective: complete an actionable inventory within 72 hours.
Steps:
1) List all food with amounts and expiration dates;
2) Count water by container, designate storage;
3) Assemble a basic medical kit for skin and fever;
4) Identify energy sources and waste;
5) Evaluate security: doors, windows, lines of retreat.
Reward: Environmental Analysis (I).
The tiny animal in his stomach slowed down. Lists he could do. Lists were a bridge built from small, okay stones. He looked at his own scribbles on the notebook, almost identical to the System's. He felt ridiculous relief, like meeting a stranger who speaks your language better than you.
"Alright," he said in a voice he barely recognized. "We begin."
He finished sorting the cupboards - marking weights on packages with a thick marker, drawing fill lines on water bottles and writing dates next to them. He stacked noisy items where he could reach them last and heavy ones where he'd regret them least. He cleaned the sink and turned it into storage: stopper in, fill with water, plate on top to keep dust honest. He filled two pots and wrote on the lids A1 and A2 and didn't mind that the code meant nothing to anyone else.
The refrigerator yielded a census of small mistakes: two eggs, a noble wedge of a tired cheese, leftover pasta with a sauce he did not trust, a glass jar of pickles with a humorless expression, three vanilla yogurts, a lemon pretending to be useful. He wrote perishables first, then use - within - a - week, then leave - it - alone.
He built a little medicine box from a shoe box and a stubborn lid. Bandages, gauze pads, alcohol, painkillers, thermometer, two pairs of dish gloves promoted to surgical status without ceremony. He wrote KIT 1 on the top and KIT 2 on a scrap of paper and slid it into a drawer. Promises had a place, even when they weren't worth much yet.
Energy. He cranked a hand - crank lamp until his forearm complained. The bulb produced an honest, hardworking halo and then settled into a fade he didn't love. He placed the lamp on its side so the beam bit the ceiling instead of the window and made a mental note to find opaque tape for later. He found candles and set them on saucers. He held a lighter, whispered don't be stupid, and put it back. Fire has opinions you don't get to vote on.
Security. He checked the board at the door and cinched the belt tighter. He pressed his ear to the wood; the building hummed low, the way ocean hums when you can't see it. He taped a cloth over the mail slot because the world is an artist at entering wrong.
He sat down on the rug with his back against the couch and turned off the lamp to listen. Darkness is not only absence; it's an instrument. In it, the organs of a building become audible. Water slid behind the wall and clicked somewhere. Metal sighed. An elevator coughed, as if embarrassed, then stopped between floors to reconsider. Tires whispered outside. Somewhere far, far away, someone screamed, and the scream kept the same note for too long to be human.
[System: Partial Assessment Detected]
Mission #0001 progress: 41%.
Observations: outward - facing light sources reduced; interior light leak minimal.
Suggestion: cover router and power strip LEDs. Consider repositioning power strip behind furniture.
He did as told. The tiny green stars died beneath tape and scrap paper. The room felt smaller, more honest. He smiled without meaning to and was frightened by the feeling of relief, as if he had just invited the System to live where fear had lived.
He wrote on the notebook's last page: THINGS I WILL DO EVEN IF AFRAID. The first line read: close the curtain even when I want to look. The second: drink water on a schedule. The third: don't talk to the door.
He thought of the neighbor across the hall. He didn't write "Madame Bourdain." Naming something and leaving it alone in the dark weren't compatible acts. He wrote VOICE? CHECK TOMORROW, which wasn't true and would keep him honest.
[System: Proposal - Mission #0002, Energy Minimum]
Objective: ensure light, radio, and phone recharge for 72 hours.
Steps:
1) Hand - crank lamp 5 minutes per waking hour;
2) Turn off all non - essential devices;
3) Create an extension to move light sources away from windows;
4) Identify low - drain radio options.
Reward: Fabrication (I).
He found a spare cable, tested it, screwed the power strip beneath the table to hide any accidental glow. He wrote a reminder on a sticky note and stuck it to the back of his phone - AIRPLANE FIRST - so that muscle memory wouldn't betray him later. He moved like someone who had learned from games that where you place your save points matters more than your bravery.
The television, muted now, showed a roundabout lit by streetlights that didn't agree with each other. Every time one blinked off, the darkness invented a new silhouette for half a heartbeat. Kael watched in silence until he realized the silhouettes had begun to look like people he might know. He turned off the television.
An explosion puffed the air in the baseboards. The plates in the cabinet chimed as if asking each other if that counted. He counted along with them, slow: one, two, three, hold. He rubbed his thumb against the polished wood of the table until he remembered he could damage it, and then he did it harder, because damage is sometimes better than panic.
He moved to the window and didn't open the curtain. He pressed his fingers to the curtain's edge and imagined the city continuing without his eyes to watch it. A hissed chorus of engines rose. A siren dragged its note across the window and dropped it like a bag no one wanted to carry anymore. A metallic groan announced something large changing its mind.
He allowed himself a coffee. He hated himself for the decision and forgave himself for it in the same breath. Tiny rituals were a religion. He filled the kettle from one of the pots - water in, water out, count everything - and lit the stove. The ring flared, blue and obedient. The smell of coffee demoted the night from endless to specific, from legend to problem.
While the kettle complained, he cleaned the countertop and rearranged the inventory with a clerk's seriousness. He wrote BREAKFAST in the margin and listed five meals that used as little heat and noise as possible. Beneath that he wrote EMERGENCY: EAT COLD. He moved a can opener to the central drawer, put a spoon beside it, and shut the drawer softly, as if the spoon needed rest.
The System did not talk again. It did not cheer or chide. It did not enumerate what he had done wrong. It held itself in the corner of his mind like a panel you can open and close with a thought and never misplace. Kael liked it despite himself. He tried to say why in a sentence and failed. Liking it was simply the same shape as liking correct measurements. Liking it was the opposite of hope.
He wrote a new page: MAP OF THE APARTMENT. He sketched walls and doors. He marked a cross where a shove would hurt the door most and triangles where he could wedge furniture quickly. He drew arrows that were not escape routes but ways to live a smaller life. He wrote CRAWL HERE next to a stretch behind the couch, because crawling would make him quieter even when he didn't need to be.
He considered texting someone. He typed YANN? and erased it. He typed YOU OK? and erased that. He finally wrote Where are you? and put the phone screen down, leaving the message unsent because he understood that asking a question built a bridge in your head, and the mind wanted to cross any bridge it built.
Time stopped being a line and became a sequence of tasks laid on the table. He set alarms for nothing because alarms meant permission, and all the permissions had been revoked without anyone telling him. He breathed by inventory item: in for pasta, out for rice, in for water, out for light.
The bicycle bell trembled. He looked at the door and saw it for what it was: an idea nailed into wood. He walked to it and placed his palm against it and said nothing at all. The wood said nothing back. He stood until his hand was warm and then removed it, leaving an absence of warmth the shape of a hand for the door to think about.
He lay down on the rug and put his ear to the floor. The apartment had a heartbeat. It was not his. Water made a loop. A transformer hummed; electricity is just singing we can't join. Somewhere in the building, fabric tore and stopped - the short sound of a decision un - made. He felt the floor vibrate faintly, a cat's purr of infrastructure, and wished briefly that the city would explain itself. Explanation is a privilege; survival is the job.
[System: Note] - Panic is data. Treat it. - Continue Mission #0001 until 100%. - Eyes outside only after completion.
He sat up with the feeling of being watched by a helpful ghost. "Noted," he said, and wrote NOTED in his notebook as if that counted.
He returned to the window and let two fingers widen the curtain. Fire colored the horizon. He imagined the map of the city in layers: apartments like his, tiny and stubborn, stacked above streets that had lost interest in being roads and become rivers of noise. Bridges were throats. Intersections were hearts that beat irregularly. Somewhere - a long ride away, in another life - someone would be making a decision people would call bad or good before they had time to swallow it. He closed the curtain.
He washed the single cup he had dirtied and wiped it dry, then wiped it again because doing a thing twice felt like the smallest kind of wealth. He placed the cup upside down as if gravity could reset anything at all. He sat and reopened the notebook, copied his lists prettier, then uglier, until the ink looked like it belonged to someone who had planned for this.
He opened the System deliberately, the way you open a tool you mean to own rather than borrow. The rectangle sharpened - no lag, no glow. Just clarity.
[System: Local Context Map] - Multi - family building, stairwell B, four floors, two landing doors per floor. - Elevator present; reliability low. - Shared light: motion - activated in hallways. - Potential resources: storage cages, boiler room, roof access. - Potential threats: unknown number of residents; abnormal behavior detected in district logs.
Recommendation: Do not leave apartment until Mission #0001 complete. Prepare "threshold protocol" for neighbor interaction.
He wrote THRESHOLD PROTOCOL and underlined it twice. He wrote: No door opened without code. Voices low. Items slid, not handed. Lights off before action. Then he smiled despite himself because writing rules was a way to speak to a future version of himself he trusted more than the current one.
In the silence that followed, he noticed that his hands had stopped shaking. He found the motion a little obscene and allowed the fear to be angry about it for a minute. Then he folded the fear like cloth and put it away on a shelf with the other useful items.
The building made a decision. Somewhere above him, a light clicked to life and hummed, and then another light answered. The hum traveled down the stairwell and died. The elevator thought about being brave and decided against it. He heard a shoe sole slide in the hallway beyond his door, the sound of someone almost falling and then choosing dignity. The bell did not ring. Kael held his breath until the shoe moved on, then released it measured.
He wrote TOMORROW: neighbors, and left the attempt at kindness on the page without hugging it with promises.
He ate a spoon of peanut butter and called it dinner. He turned the crank lamp because the System had said he should, and sometimes obedience is a good shortcut. He killed the last dots of light, lay on his side on the rug, and watched the shape of the room memorize him.
He did not sleep. He un - layered. He let thoughts fall away until only simple awareness remained - door, window, board, bell, water, lamp. He became the quiet measurement of a quiet place.
The bell gave a single silver sound. He did not open his eyes. He waited for the second note that never came, then agreed not to think about why the first had. Outside, a siren went hungry and stopped feeding itself. The city's fire exhaled. Somewhere a motor tried again and failed with dignity.
He slid toward the rim of sleep and the System placed one last line like a hand on his shoulder:
[System: Reminder] - Finish the inventory when you wake. - Do not negotiate with pictures on a screen. - Build first, decide later.
The words steadied the edges of night. Kael let himself be small and useful. Beyond the curtain, the city burned without him. Inside the apartment, a logic took root - modest and stubborn. He could work with that. He could build on it.
He told himself a final truth, spoken directly to the ceiling so the room could keep it for him: "We do not need to be brave. We need to be correct." He let the sentence disassemble into breath and then into nothing. The world, elsewhere, continued to shout. Here, the order of small things began to answer back.